5 February 2012

On Saturday Becky, Sofi and Gibson went to a Chinese New Year celebration.  The activities began with a parade.  The temperature was in the 60s, very pleasant.  Gibson got to try his first fortune cookie at the parade.  He was not impressed.

There are not a lot of Chinese people in Southern Oregon, so coming up with a whole parade's worth of culturally accurate entries was a stretch.  Some of the odder participants were bagpipers wearing Scottish kilts, a group of junior cheerleaders, a man in lederhosen playing the accordion and some Victorian Christmas carolers.  Our favorite group was the Loong Mah Ladies Dragon Team from San Francisco.  They had a super long dragon and could twist it into wonderfully complicated designs.

Gibson got a dragon painted on his cheek.  This is the year of the dragon, an especially lucky year.

We tried on some Chinese clothes and got our photo taken.  Becky is wearing a traditional Chinese wedding outfit.  It was fun to try on the clothes and the embroidery was gorgeous.

While half of us were celebrating Chinese New Year, the other half were playing at the Cub Scout Snowcapades.  Abe and Helen got to try a variety of winter activities and Brandan went along to supervise.  Here's a photo of Abe on a zip line.

There were lots of sled runs.

The kids practiced building fires and then roasted marshmallows on their fires.

 Here's a photo of Abe eating his marshmallow.

 

The kids also got to try out snowshoeing.  The snowcapaders left home before 7 am and didn't return until after 5 pm.  They were pretty exhausted from a fun day.